_________________Stu Ward_________________Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~HippocratesStrength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley_________________Thanks TimD

Well, my opinion is biased against the GMO's, so take it for what it's worth. Yes, I understand A reason they are developed. It's to enlargen the amount of food we can produce to feed the ever increasing population. That's a good thing. But from what I read in the conclusion, they didn't really come up with any determinations of whether it did or did not contribute to toxicity. From everything else I've read and heard from alternative news sources, it is very probable that it DOES contribute to cancers and other toxicities. Some European countries have banned Monsanto's GMO seeds. And, why is Monsanto distributing GMO's, yet storing heirlooms for themselves up in the Norway seed storage site? Just my opinion here, and I don't want to go further and get into conspiracy theory. Everything I've listed so far is fact that the lamestream boys and girls from the media won't touch.

First, on the topic of world hunger, we can cure it today. We've got all the food we need. But there's no profit in doing that so people starve. To death.

Second, people lie, corporations lie. It's just a fact of life. Let the buyer beware and all that.

By 1 and 2, if Monsanto (the really major player) and ADM are claiming the productivity->world hunger thing, they are trying to distract you. Wouldn't be the first time. No conspiracy theory here, just assuming they are trying to make money and don't want anybody to see the big payoff they're hoping for somewhere down the line.

Third, stockpiling heirlooms? Now why would that be? Unless we consider:

Fourth, when any market comes to be dominated by < 5-6 big players who cannot be controlled by a government, they consolidate to 2-3 and then form monopolies, and extract maximum profit from the market.

Fifth, GMOs are PATENTABLE. A farmer who buys GMO corn is legally forbidden to take some as seed corn, he must get his seed corn every year from the patent holder. Sterility genes now allow GMOs that produce sterile seed.

Sixth, anybody who didn't bother to stockpile non-GMO seed will have no supply except from the GMO source, who, surprise surprise has been stockpiling other non-GMO seed as well, so that

by 3, 4, and 5 and 6 a non-paranoid person may conclude Monsanto, ADM and a couple of others are actively trying to corner the world market on food. Wouldn't be the first time somebody has pulled it off (well, regionally, not worldwide of course).

A non-paranoid person would also believe that the big GMO Corps' explanations for stockpiling is their need for genetic diversity for further research. Plausible, likely true, and wonderfully incomplete. It also allows them to say, "Hey its not my problem if you didn't keep any seed corn, this stuff costs money to keep, of course we have to charge for it -- after we've slipped in the sterility gene."

Not all corporations lie... It seems the only groups against GM foods are generally, Organic, natural organizations, who are obviously in competition with GM foods and would rather not compete. So the profits issue is on both sides of the coin here.

It is unfortunate that Monsanto is becoming such a monopoly. If it turns out that, it causes toxicity (conclusive) then they should be sued up the ying yang. If not however, I still worry over the effects on biodiversity.

The other issue I have is all about the rule of unintended consequences, which is, in Ken's formulation, "There are always unintended consequences, and they are always bad."

It should come as no surprise that if we find any problems with GM Foods, they might hit the kidneys and liver, since those are both filtering organs, no? That was the first thing I noticed in the study. They don't know yet that it's downright toxic, but they don't know that it's not.

Example: GE needed a coolant for its transformers. The prime requirement was a liquid stable at high temperatures, up to 900 degrees. They came up with polychlorinated biphenyls, which worked great. Being a bit cheap and looking to save a buck, they also dumped a lot of this stuff in the Hudson river. Then came the big shocker that these chemicals, PCBs as they are called, are cancer causing and poisonous at many levels. But that's not even the problem, the problem is they were precisely engineered to be stable at high temperatures, you can't just burn them. They are the dickens to get rid of.

Example: Plastics have the wonderful quality of not degrading because no organism on Earth eats them. So we make bags out of them, appliances, car parts, everything. Guess what they do in the landfill? Nothing, because no creature on Earth eats them. The oceans are now full of microscopic plastic bits that fish eat -- and that we eat. There is no getting rid of the stuff.

But surely these corps tested this stuff for safety right? Like they did with Thalidomide? Silicone breast implants? Growth hormones in the beef feed?

Who knew that corn-fed beef would not be as healthy as the grass-fed stuff?

On paper I think the idea of GMOs is fantastic, so many capabilities, and really is not that far off of breeding for certain traits (which yes, has it's downsides as well). However, in practice they have proven to be nothing short of a nuisance at best, life threatening at worst. I have no love for companies such as Monsanto, and I'm sure short of the upper levels of that company we wont find many that feel differently.

I feel much stronger about GMOs for non-food sources (medical mostly), but even GMO food could eventually solve so many current issues, but with the current direction of GMO crops it is becoming more and more of a dream rather than an eventual reality.

The main issues with GMOs obviously lie in the fact if you change one gene in clone, you could be interrupting another gene, causing inactivation and possibly an undesirable defect. Aside from that the only other problems GMO foods seem to cause are caused by the companies themselves rather than GMO's as a whole (i.e. Monsanto using bad vectors etc).

We do not know nearly enough about the human body OR the genomics of vectors and plants in question to be able to be playing God with our food yet. I don't know enough about the business aspect of GMO foods to make much of an educated statement, but I do know GMO companies practice some shady (at best) acts.

So in short, I think GMOs are a wonderful idea, but the current state of them is deplorable, which gives the average layman a horrible perception of something with great potential, that is being utilized FAR before it should even be conceivable to be used.

Good job Ken. I wasn't going to go that far, just answer Stu's question on what I thought of the study. Great job on moving this into conspiracy theory.

I purposely posted a rather neutral study because I wanted to get you opinions and it worked. The thing that triggered the post was an article on mercola.com about a GM insecticide built into corn that is now though to be causing allergies and other issues. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... -food.aspx

It seems the more you read about Monsanto the worse it gets. Of course this is also the maker of saccharin, DDT, Agent Orange, Aspartame, BST, PCBs, etc, and of course with a track record like that you know they can be trusted, right?

_________________Stu Ward_________________Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~HippocratesStrength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley_________________Thanks TimD

It's all conspiracy theory bull$h1t. It is utterly riddled with logical fallacies. I'm talking grade A bollocks here. I went over this on more than one occasion. Remember the thread where Peter Rouse went insane? Or what about when James asked about it, and I debated Frogbyte, who said some of the most utterly fatuous things of the entire time he was posting regularly here; and that's no small feat. This was a guy who talked out of his ass every single day.

I went over factual inaccuracies, various fallacies, from poisoning the well and generalization with the obligatory Monsanto history lesson that starts at the beginning of time, for some reason, to the red herrings, and non-sequiturs.

I'm not saying it's good, bad or indifferent. I just don't know yet, and that's the point. How can you say objections to GMO's are BS? Back to Stu's original question and study he posted, it seems that some questions are out there, and it also appears there are no definate studies that show it's safe. With no definate proof, and questions that are as bad as have been brought up, IMHO, it's best to err on the safe side and keep it off the shelf until there is valid proof one way or the other. I'm also kind of surprized you're so stiff on this issue without any doubt that all the allegations are BS. Red herrings, strawmen and the rest aside. I saw in another thread you feel that the corporate oligarchy is running things, and maybe GMO's are a good thing, so let's get the proof first and prove the allegations are NOT due to GMO's. Right now, it's difficult to figure out in the US which foods are and are not GMO's, but you better believe I'm going to bypass them untill I see valid proof to the contrary.

I can say they are BS, because when you check the facts, you discover they aren't accurate. The only accurate information they will provide, are things that have no bearing on their point. You can also tell it's BS, when they do things to be deceptive, or they make arguments that are not logically sound. You can say Monsanto do various bad things. So you name 10 different items one at a time, with evidence, that are all things Monsanto did wrong. Then you use that to say therefore, they are up to no good here as well. If you selectively pick all the things they do wrong, and then try to say everything they do will be like that, it just doesn't logically follow. If you see a lot of Red Herrings, and verbose submissions of "evidence" that have no bearing on the point being made, that shows a desperate attempt to avoid scrutiny. This is evidence that the author is trying to be deceptive.

The definition if faulty logic, factual inaccuracy, evidence of deception, and demonstrably false statements are not BS, then I don't know what is.

Yes I do think we have a corporate oligarchy going on here, and Monsanto may very well play a part in it. I don't doubt some of the things Ken is saying above. They very well may be acting out of greed, and trying to create some sort of monopoly. Corporations tend to do that.

The problem is, there is no evidence for any of the claims people make regarding the health of GMO. People make this claim, and then try to gather info to make it look convincing after the fact. That is NOT how science works. The conclusion comes afterwards in science. The way they are doing it is straight pseudoscience.

I have been pointed to various pieces of "evidence". Most of them are testimonials or propaganda videos about how evil Monsanto is. Multiple times people have made these claims, but they never have any evidence. They often use rhetoric about modifying genes that are scientifically impossible. The dumbest is the idea that modifying a gene that is responsible for a piece of anatomy in a particular animal, can somehow be used by bacteria. Bacteria can use the genes from other strains of bacteria, but it can't use a gene for a bit of anatomy it doesn't have.

My real issue is where the burden of proof should reside. GMOs are not adequately tested and the chance of catastrophic negative consequences are real. No one will know for sure until something happens. The fact that we are now seeing small negative consequences on products that have met the legal testing requiremnts means that the standard needs to be reexamined. It's very hard to protect agains "Black Swan" type events because they have never happened before and they will come in a form that may not be obvious. However, if it's possible to concieve of potential mechanisms for these events to occur, they should be safeguarded against. I don't have a "warm fuzzy" that the public is adequately protected against GMOs.

_________________Stu Ward_________________Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~HippocratesStrength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley_________________Thanks TimD

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